


baby finches and the art of falling

by cosimamanning



Series: the consequences of nurture [1]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Bad Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 11:18:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11735985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosimamanning/pseuds/cosimamanning
Summary: She remembers the birds, trapped, and the baby finch, falling, falling, falling, until it broke, and Rachel wonders when she’ll break.





	baby finches and the art of falling

**Author's Note:**

> hi yeah i suddenly have a lot of feelings about rachel duncan so have some of them

Rachel breathes deeply, gasping in air greedily, as if it will be stolen from her as most things are. It is cool against the burning heat of her lungs, too cool, and the emptiness of her eye aches, her body trembles with effort, and she fights the urge to cry. 

Instead, she breathes. 

Ferdinand stalks out of the room, and Rachel thinks about what he means to her.  _ The only man who ever loved her _ . She still feels the pressure of his hands against her throat, expression burning, no hint of playfulness or sign of stopping. Helplessness crawls up her spine, tiny hooks digging in and blooming throughout her ribcage, even now, as he’s gone, while she’s still breathing and he’s walking off to find Siobhan. 

She calls Siobhan to warn her, knowing that Ferdinand will likely die, that she’s condemning this man, but as Rachel gasps in breaths as though each will be her last she can’t bring herself to care. Her body aches at the realization that she will finally be truly alone in the world, Rachel Duncan with no one to care for her, no mother or father or lover or sisters to be at her side, and she knows that it’s her own fault. 

She is utterly and truly alone. 

Her heart remembers a time where she wasn’t, tries to fill in the gaps and convince her that there was a time where she was loved, but she can’t bring herself to dare hope, not even in the past, not even in her memories. 

She feels the absence of love more keenly than her missing eye and her heart constricts at the thought of it, so Rachel thinks back, back to when she was young and could delude herself, for just a moment, that the fleeting happiness and sense of belonging she felt were anything more than illusions.

Rachel closes her eye and  _ remembers _ . 

* * *

 

Ethan Duncan keeps birds. 

The Duncan estate is large and grand and imposing, and on the days where the weather is pleasant and the rainclouds have cleared from the sky, Ethan lifts Rachel from her bed and onto his shoulders and takes her out to the aviary, which connects to Susan’s pristine greenhouses. 

They’re scientists, and all scientists have their quirks. 

Susan Duncan keeps all sorts of flowers blooming year-round, bursts of color amidst their monochromatic life, splashes of reds and pinks and oranges and blues and yellows and so much  _ green _ , as far as Rachel’s bright, curious eyes can see. Susan tried to teach her once, how to coax life from seemingly nothing, but Rachel does not have the same green thumb as her mother. 

Ethan Duncan keeps birds. 

There are several species flying around the aviary, most that he finds in the nearby forest that neatly keeps their home hidden from the prying eyes of the public and rehabilitates, but finches are by far his favorite, several different kinds found nesting at any given time. He leads her around and points to them carefully, lifting Rachel when she is too small to see, and whispers their names in her ears. 

They flock to him, understand that he is their caretaker, their savior, but sometimes Rachel wonders if the birds feel trapped, in this glass dome, away from the forest, the sky, from  _ freedom _ . 

While her father tosses seed to eager prisoners, Rachel wanders into the greenery, and thinks, not for the first time, how everything in her parents’ home seems fit for pairs. 

Ethan and Susan have each other, and Susan has her flowers and Ethan has his birds, but all Rachel has is herself. 

At nights, her father reads stories to her about an island far away, and for once, his voice doesn’t hold the clinical coldness of a scientist, but the warmth and vibrancy of a  _ father _ , and Rachel tricks herself into believing. That’s something Ethan teaches her to do, as he deepens his voice to impersonate Dr. Moreau, because Rachel can see in his eyes that he  _ believes _ , and even at such a young age she understands that it’s a funny thing to do, because she’s being raised by  _ scientists _ . 

If Ethan Duncan, a renowned scientist, can delude himself into believing in an island that doesn’t exist, then Rachel Duncan, age five, can delude herself into thinking that her parents love her. 

From a distance, it’s almost believable. 

They go through the motions well enough. 

Ethan Duncan tucks her in at night and reads her stories until she falls asleep, a small smile fixed on her face, and kisses her forehead almost fondly. In the mornings, Susan makes her tea and plaits her hair when she asks her to. They ask about her lessons and Rachel smiles and tells them, and they go on walks through the worn paths through the forests, stomping through piles of leaves and laughing, a camera trained on her, and they tell her that they love her, the very words leave their mouths. 

But through it all, Rachel feels like she’s being studied. 

She lives with scientists, after all, knows what it looks like when they’re observing something, someone, and she can feel the weight of their gazes on her when she’s studying, playing, even sleeping, sometimes, clinical, always observing. 

Ethan takes her out to the aviary―Susan has long since given up on instilling any sense of a green thumb in her daughter, declaring Rachel a lost cause after the seventh dead plumeria―and shows her how to tend for the birds, enthusiasm shining bright in his eyes, and bitterness rises like bile in Rachel’s throat because sometimes she thinks that he loves the birds more than he loves her. 

But Rachel smiles and listens and remembers the name of every bird, of every flower, attends all her lessons and absorbs them as she’s expected to, desperately trying to do something, anything, to make them truly love her. 

Ethan Duncan smiles at her but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, not yet, and Susan grows more disinterested by the day. Rachel feels very small in the Duncan home, in her bed, too small, the walls closing in on her, throat tightening, feels like one of the damsels in the stories Ethan reads to her, but Rachel knows that, at least for her, there is no hero coming to save her. 

No one cares enough. 

Rachel sets her jaw and squares her shoulder and follows her father out to the aviary early in the mornings as the years pass, and it’s easier to pretend, now, that he loves her. Some days it almost feels real, when he looks at her, expression bright like when he talks about his birds, and Rachel revels in it. 

He points out a mated pair of finches, nesting in one of the trees, arm wrapped around Rachel’s shoulder as they observe them. 

“Redpolls,” Rachel names, and Ethan beams at her. 

“Very good.” Rachel soaks in the praise like sunlight, letting his words warm her slowly, relishing in the feeling. “The eggs should hatch in a week or two, and you can help me make sure the chicks are in good health.”

He kisses her forehead and then wanders off to tend to some of the other birds, and Rachel stays for a moment, watching the redpolls, tending to their five eggs. 

They, like all the other birds, are trapped here. 

Stuck in this dome to be observed, studied, by a scientist who claims to adore them, but keeps them trapped, away from freedom, from the forest, from endless stretches of sky where they can truly  _ soar _ . 

Sometimes Rachel feels like these finches, trapped here. 

Being studied, observed. 

She wonders what it’s like to be truly  _ free _ . 

Part of her craves it, the wind whistles through her bones and whips through her hair and  _ sings  _ to her, tells her stories like Ethan, stories of what she could be, of what she could  _ have _ , away from here, away from the synthetic love of two scientists, and part of Rachel craves it. 

The other part of her, like the finches, is drawn to the familiar hand that keeps her, and she watches as droves of trapped birds flock to her father, watches as he laughs, delighted, as they perch on him, waiting patiently for the seed he promises. 

Even though the love he has for her might not be entirely real, it’s the only thing Rachel knows, and she thinks she might be lost without it. 

She’s only seven.

When the time comes for the eggs to hatch, Ethan excitedly pulls her from the middle of her french lessons and into the aviary, and they watch as the chicks struggle to enter the world, one by one. 

By the end of the few hours, only one chick is alive. 

The adult redpolls are distraught, as Ethan picks up four dead chicks, copies of the one living baby bird, chirping away in its nest, and gently tucks them into the soil. 

“I’m sorry about your sisters,” Rachel whispers to the surviving finch, even though she knows it can’t understand her. She thinks, if she had sisters, and they were taken from her, she wouldn’t know what to do with herself. 

The baby finch just chirps, waiting for its mother to feed it, and finally the mother does. 

“This one’s a fighter,” Ethan tells her, and he wipes a tear from his eye that Rachel doesn’t think she’s supposed to see, “I think we ought to call her Rachel.” 

Despite herself, Rachel smiles up at him, and he wraps his arm around her shoulders in a sort of hug, the two of them staring at the remaining three finches. 

A month later, a scientist comes to her house when she’s alone and tells her there’s been a fire. 

His name is Aldous Leekie, and Rachel knows him well. 

He comes for dinner with her parents at least twice a month, and always asks her about her studies, in the same clinical, observatory way her parents do. He’s a scientist, and Rachel is quickly learning that scientists are not to be trusted. 

He tells her that her parents are dead, and half of Rachel collapses, tearing in on herself, but the other  _ soars _ , because maybe now she can finally be free. 

But then Aldous tells her that he’ll be taking care of her, now, at a place called DYAD.

Rachel excuses her while men go and pack her things, and goes out to the aviary, to the tree with the nest with the finch with her name. 

It’s stretching its little wings and trying to fly. 

Rachel watches, uncaring, as it falls, helplessly, to the ground, landing rather hard on a root, wing twisting in a way Rachel knows will be fatal. 

It’s mother chirps frantically, flying around her as if asking for help, but Rachel just stares at the little bird on the ground. 

“I should have died, too.” She says, and then she turns on her heel and leaves, escaping the aviary, and her home, just to go to another prison. 

Maybe if the flames had consumed her, she would be free. 

Aldous gives her the one thing Ethan and Susan had never been able to: sisters. 

Once, she had memorized the names of birds and flowers to impress her parents, to try and make them smile. Now, she memorizes subject numbers, hers the first to find itself branded on the inside of her eyelids. 

_ 779H41 _ . 

That’s all she is, to some people, a combination of letters and numbers. 

Not Rachel Duncan, the girl nobody loves, the girl who pretends, the girl who wanted to fly. 

_ 779H41.  _

It’s almost liberating to know she isn’t special, because now she understands why her parents didn’t love her, not really. How could they, when there were so many versions of her, versions that could swim and run and won math championships. 

Rachel is just one copy out of dozens, and Ethan and Susan Duncan could have ended up with any one of her  _ sisters _ , her clones. They just ended up being the unlucky ones that got stuck with  _ her _ , Rachel, the unlovable one. 

Rachel studies and tries to make herself useful, and when Leekie smiles at her, sometimes she can pretend. She even asks, once, when she’s still young and mourning the loss of parents who never truly loved her, if she can call him  _ father _ . He looks at her, clearly caught off-guard, and tells her he doesn’t want to disrespect the memory of Ethan Duncan, a dear friend and close colleague of his, but Rachel reads the rejection as clear as day. 

She remembers the birds, trapped, and the baby finch, falling, falling, falling, until it  _ broke _ , and Rachel wonders when she’ll break. 

She wonders if she’ll ever be free. 

* * *

 

Rachel sighs.

She feels the absence of love more keenly than her missing eye, but she has learned to live with the pain of being unloved a thousand times over, and she will continue to live with it. 

Rachel Duncan knows she has no one to care for her, no mother or father or lover or sisters to be at her side, but she has herself, and that is what matters. 

She thinks about the baby finch, in her father’s aviary, all those years ago, falling, falling, falling, until it broke, but Rachel knows she is not like that baby finch. 

She may be falling, but she will  _ soar _ . 

And the wind will sing for her when she does. 

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed!!! i'm basically gonna make a lil mini series about my fav clones (might be all of them but may not get to all of them) when they were younger bc i'm a hoe for backstories. as always, comments and kudos are greatly appreciated, and thanks so much for reading :)
> 
> you can find me on my tumblr, [here](danaryas.tumblr.com)
> 
> much love xoxo


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